Contrastivism can be applied to a variety of problems within philosophy, and as such, it can be coherently seen as a unified movement. This volume brings together state-of-the-art research on the contrastive treatment of philosophical concepts and questions, including knowledge, belief, free will, moral luck, Bayesian confirmation theory, causation, and explanation.

A central intuition many epistemologists seem to have is that knowledge is distinctively valuable. In his paper 'Radical Scepticism, Epistemic Luck and Epistemic Value', Duncan Pritchard rejects the virtue-theoretic explanation of this intuition. This explanation says that knowledge is distinctively valuable because it is a cognitive achievement. It is maintained, in the first place, that the arguments Pritchard musters against the thesis that knowledge is a cognitive achievement are unconvincing. It is argued, in the second place, that even if the (...) arguments against the thesis that knowledge is a cognitive achievement were convincing, there is another explanation of the intuition that knowledge has final value available: the question-relative treatment of knowledge. (shrink)

Ignorance is a neglected issue in philosophy. This is surprising for, contrary to what one might expect, it is not clear what ignorance is. Some philosophers say or assume that it is a lack of knowledge, whereas others claim or presuppose that it is an absence of true belief. What is one ignorant of when one is ignorant? What kinds of ignorance are there? This neglect is also remarkable because ignorance plays a crucial role in all sorts of controversial societal (...) issues. Ignorance is often thought to be a moral and legal excuse; it is a core concept in medical ethics and debates about privacy, and it features in religious traditions and debates about belief in God. This book does not only study an epistemic phenomenon that is interesting in itself, but also provides important tools that can be fruitfully used in debates within and beyond philosophy. (shrink)

Privacy is valued by many. But what it means to have privacy remains less than clear. In this paper, I argue that the notion of privacy should be understood in epistemic terms. What it means to have (some degree of) privacy is that other persons do not stand in significant epistemic relations to those truths one wishes to keep private.

Many philosophers are building a solid case in favour of the knowledge account of assertion (KAA). According to KAA, if one asserts that P one represents oneself as knowing that P. KAA has recently received support from linguistic data about prompting challenges, parenthetical positioning and predictions. In this article, I add another argument to this rapidly growing list: an argument from what I will call ‘reinforcing parenthesis’.

Subject sensitive invariantism is the view that whether a subject knows depends on what is at stake for that subject: the truth-value of a knowledge-attribution is sensitive to the subject's practical interests. I argue that subject sensitive invariantism cannot accept a very plausible principle for memory to transmit knowledge. I argue, furthermore, that semantic contextualism and contrastivism can accept this plausible principle for memory to transmit knowledge. I conclude that semantic contextualism and contrastivism are in a dialectical position better than (...) subject sensitive invariantism is. (shrink)

In this introduction to the special issue of Social Epistemology on epistemological contrastivism, I make some remarks on the history of contrastivism, describe three main versions of contrastivism, and offer a guide through the papers that compose this issue.

One of the most important questions about divine revelation is the question – what is the nature of divine revelation? This conceptual question even precedes such epistemological questions as whether we can know that a divine revelation occurred, or whether divine revelation can produce religious knowledge. In this paper, I argue for a particular analysis of the concept of divine revelation. Key to my proposal is that ‘to reveal’ is a term of epistemic appraisal: if a subject revealed a proposition (...) to a receiver, then this implies that the receiver actually accepted the information offered. I will end this paper by investigating what the consequences of my proposal are for answering the two epistemological questions. (shrink)

In order to explain such puzzling cases as the Bank Case and the Airport Case, semantic contextualists defend two theses. First, that the truth-conditions of knowledge sentences fluctuate in accordance with features of the conversational context. Second, that this fluctuation can be explained by the fact that 'knows' is an indexical. In this paper, I challenge both theses. In particular, I argue that it isn't obvious that 'knows' is an indexical at all, and that contrastivism can do the same work (...) as contextualism is supposed to do, without being linguistically implausible. (shrink)

In order to explain such puzzling cases as the Bank Case and the Airport Case, semantic contextualists defend two theses. First, that the truth-conditions of knowledge sentences fluctuate in accordance with features of the conversational context. Second, that this fluctuation can be explained by the fact that 'knows' is an indexical. In this paper, I challenge both theses. In particular, I argue (i) that it isn't obvious that 'knows' is an indexical at all, and (ii) that contrastivism can do the (...) same work as contextualism is supposed to do, without being linguistically implausible. (shrink)

Contextualism is a quite popular research program nowadays. In essence, the contextualist holds that the truth conditions of knowledge attributing and of knowledge denying sentences vary in accordance with the context in which the sentences are uttered. This theory is positively motivated by its capability of best explaining certain intuitions we have about knowledge attributions and knowledge denials. In this paper, I will argue that this positive motivation isn't as compelling as the contextualists think it to be. This I will (...) do by construing a so-called ‘warranted assertability maneuver’ against contextualism which shows that, with respect to knowledge attributing and denying sentences, the con-textualist has confused a variance in warranted assertability conditions for a variance in truth conditions. (shrink)

John Turri has recently provided two problem cases for the knowledge account of assertion (KAA) to argue for the express knowledge account of assertion (EKAA). We defend KAA by explaining away the intuitions about the problem cases and by showing that our explanation is theoretically superior to EKAA.

One of the most interesting anti-skeptical theories that has been proposed in the recent literature is epistemological contrastivism. In this paper, I answer some important objections to contrastivism that have been put forward by Steven Luper. The upshot of this paper is that Luper’s objections fail to damage contrastivism.

In cases of imaginative contagion, imagining something has doxastic or doxastic-like consequences. In this reply to Tamar Szabó Gendler's article in this collection, I investigate what the philosophical consequences of these cases could be. I argue (i) that imaginative contagion has consequences for how we should understand the nature of imagination and (ii) that imaginative contagion has consequences for our understanding of what belief-forming mechanisms there are. Along the way, I make some remarks about what the consequences of the contagion (...) cases are for the relation between knowledge and imagination. (shrink)

This volume introduces readers to the main problems and positions in epistemology. It shows where these problems and positions connect and where they part thereby providing a valuable resource both for following connections between ideas and for appreciating the place of key figures and concepts in the subject.

Contextualist theories of knowledge have received a lot of attention in the contemporary epistemological literature. The central idea of such theories is that contextual factors play an important role in determining whether a particular knowledge sentence is true or false. Thus, on contextualist theories of knowledge it might be the case that a particular subject knows a proposition in one context but fails to know that same proposition in another context--while the only thing that has changed is the context. Of (...) the extant contextualist theories of knowledge, attributer contextualism (that is, the type of contextualism that makes the context of the attributer of knowledge crucial in determining whether a subject knows a proposition) has been discussed the most. The papers in the present collection continue this focus on attributer contextualism, and offer a fairly critical treatment of this theory. Nevertheless, a number of papers also outline new types of contextualism. What results is a collection of papers that, though negative towards attributer contextualism, for the most part is sympathetic towards contextualism in general. (shrink)

In this paper I defend biblical miracles against the popular objection that they are impossible. Doing this requires three stages of development. First, we need to know what miracles are: if we do not know this, how can we then argue that miracles are not impossible? I start out by distinguishing between two categories of miracles: subjective miracles and objective miracles. Then I go on to point out that there are two types of subjective miracles as well as two types (...) of objective miracles. Second, we need to know what the concept ‘impossible’ means: if we do not know this, how can we then argue that miracles are not impossible? I say that there are at least three senses in which we can use the word ‘impossible’. Third, we need to show that miracles are not impossible . After having show that miracles are not impossible , I draw three theological and hermeneutical consequences from the preceding discussion. (shrink)

I reply to comments by Gerry Hough, Peter Baumann and Martijn Blaauw on my book Moral Skepticisms. The main issues concern whether modest justifiedness is epistemic and how it is related to extreme justifiedness; how contrastivists can handle crazy contrast classes, indeterminacy and common language; whether Pyrrhonian scepticism leads to paralysis in decision-making or satisfies our desires to evaluate beliefs as justified or not; and how contextualists can respond to my arguments against relevance of contrast classes.

A decade ago, Isham and Butterfield proposed a topos-theoretic approach to quantum mechanics, which meanwhile has been extended by Döring and Isham so as to provide a new mathematical foundation for all of physics. Last year, three of the present authors redeveloped and refined these ideas by combining the C*-algebraic approach to quantum theory with the so-called internal language of topos theory (Heunen et al. in arXiv:0709.4364). The goal of the present paper is to illustrate our abstract setup through the (...) concrete example of the C*-algebra M n (ℂ) of complex n×n matrices. This leads to an explicit expression for the pointfree quantum phase space Σ n and the associated logical structure and Gelfand transform of an n-level system. We also determine the pertinent non-probabilisitic state-proposition pairing (or valuation) and give a very natural topos-theoretic reformulation of the Kochen–Specker Theorem.In our approach, the nondistributive lattice ℘(M n (ℂ)) of projections in M n (ℂ) (which forms the basis of the traditional quantum logic of Birkhoff and von Neumann) is replaced by a specific distributive lattice $\mathcal{O}(\Sigma_{n})$ of functions from the poset $\mathcal{C}(M_{n}(\mathbb{C}))$ of all unital commutative C*-subalgebras C of M n (ℂ) to ℘(M n (ℂ)). The lattice $\mathcal{O}(\Sigma_{n})$ is essentially the (pointfree) topology of the quantum phase space Σ n , and as such defines a Heyting algebra. Each element of $\mathcal{O}(\Sigma_{n})$ corresponds to a “Bohrified” proposition, in the sense that to each classical context $C\in\mathcal{C}(M_{n}(\mathbb{C}))$ it associates a yes-no question (i.e. an element of the Boolean lattice ℘(C) of projections in C), rather than being a single projection as in standard quantum logic. Distributivity is recovered at the expense of the law of the excluded middle (Tertium Non Datur), whose demise is in our opinion to be welcomed, not just in intuitionistic logic in the spirit of Brouwer, but also in quantum logic in the spirit of von Neumann. (shrink)

Psycholinguistic studies often look at the production of referring expressions in interactive settings, but so far few referring expression generation algorithms have been developed that are sensitive to earlier references in an interaction. Rather, such algorithms tend to rely on domain-dependent preferences for both content selection and linguistic realization. We present three experiments showing that humans may opt for dispreferred attributes and dispreferred modifier orderings when these were primed in a preceding interaction (without speakers being consciously aware of this). In (...) addition, we show that speakers are more likely to produce overspecified references, including dispreferred attributes (although minimal descriptions with preferred attributes would suffice), when these were similarly primed. (shrink)

Standardisation is increasingly seen as a means to insert ethics in innovation processes. We examine the institutionalisation of responsible innovation in de jure standardisation as this is an important but unexplored research area. In de jure standardisation, stakeholders collaborate in committees to develop standards. We adopt the anticipation, inclusion, reflexivity, and responsiveness responsible innovation framework as our theoretical lens. Our study suggests that responsible standardisation processes should embody forms of these four dimensions. We investigate the institutionalisation of these dimensions and (...) identify 96 factors that can motivate, hinder, or facilitate responsible standardisation. Factors were found through in-depth interviews with managers of a standard developing organisation. These are subsequently validated/rejected using surveys completed by committee representatives. The results suggest that the social desirability of standards is not self-evident. This study could pave the way for future research on responsible standardisation processes, complementing research on legitimacy, responsible innovation, and standardisation. (shrink)

Background In the Netherlands, people can receive (limited) demedicalised assistance in suicide (DAS)—an option less well known than physician-assisted dying (PAD). Aim This study explores which trajectories people take to seek DAS, through open-coding and inductive analysis of in-depth interviews with 17 people who receive(d) DAS from counsellors facilitated by foundation De Einder. Results People sought DAS as a result of current suffering or as a result of anticipating possible prospective suffering. People with current suffering were unable or assumed they (...) would be unable to obtain PAD. For people anticipating possible prospective suffering, we distinguished two trajectories. In one trajectory, people preferred PAD but were not reassured of help by the physician in due time and sought DAS as a backup plan. In the other trajectory, people expressed a preference for DAS mainly as a result of emphasising self-determination, independence, taking their own responsibility and preparing suicide carefully. In all trajectories, dissatisfaction with physician–patient communication—for instance about (a denied request for) PAD or fearing to discuss this—influenced the decision to seek DAS. Conclusions While PAD is the preferred option of people in two trajectories, obtaining PAD is uncertain and not always possible. Dissatisfaction with physician–patient communication can result in the physician not being involved in DAS, being unable to diagnose diseases and offer treatment nor offer reassurance that people seem to seek. We plea for more mutual understanding, respect and empathy for the limitations and possibilities of the position of the physician and the patient in discussing assistance in dying. (shrink)

This chapter discusses a central problem in Sebastian Rödl’s Self-Consciousness & Objectivity (SC&O) and in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. In a statement of the form “I think p”, the words “I think” do not contribute to the content and yet they are not redundant. What comes to the same, a thinking subject is not something and yet not nothing. But then in what sense is a thinking subject a part of the world? The problem is intractable on a merely negative understanding of (...) “I think”, like Anscombe’s merely negative thesis, endorsed by SC&O, that “I” is not a referring expression. In search of a positive understanding, this chapter proposes to understand “I think” by comparison to “hello”. A speaking subject is the expression of mutual presence in conversation — in that sense a limit of the world. Such expression may be compared to facial expression, with the crucial difference that a verbal expression can be taken up - repeated - in the third person. A speaking subject, then, is potentially absent from conversation — in that sense a part of the world. (shrink)

This reflection focuses on what insights Catholic Social Teaching can provide for corporate governance. I argue that the ‘standard’ agency theory is overly reductionist and insufficiently incorporates important economic limitations as well as human frailty. As a result, such agency theory insufficiently distinguishes firms from markets, which can easily relativize how we treat others and facilitate rationalization of unethical behavior. I then explore how three pillars of CST—human dignity, solidarity, and subsidiarity—can help overcome these limitations. CST proposes a vision of (...) the business corporation as a community of persons, working together in cooperative business relationships toward the shared purpose of contributing to human flourishing. (shrink)

We study behind-the-scenes investor activism promoting environmental, social, and governance improvements by means of a proprietary dataset of a large international, socially responsible activist fund. We examine the activist’s target selection, forms of engagement, impact on ESG performance, drivers of success, and effects on the targets’ operations and value creation. Target firms are typically large and visible, perform well, and have high liquidity and low ESG performance. Engagement induces ESG rating adjustments: firms with poor ex ante ESG ratings experience a (...) ratings increase after complying with the activist’s demands, whereas firms with high ex ante ESG ratings experience a ratings decrease following the revelation of their ESG problems. Activism that is focused on environmental and social issues is more likely to succeed if targets are ESG-sensitive. Successful engagements boost targets’ sales. Risk-adjusted excess stock returns of successful engagements outperform those of unsuccessful engagements by 2.7%. Results are especially strong for firms with low ex ante ESG scores. Specifically, targeted firms in the lowest ex ante ESG quartile outperform matched peers by 7.5% in the year after the end of the engagement. Our results thus suggest that the activism regarding corporate social responsibility generally improves ESG practices and corporate sales and is profitable to the activist. Taken together, we provide direct evidence that ethical investing and strong financial performance, both from the activist’s and the targeted firm’s perspective, can go hand-in-hand together. (shrink)

BackgroundIn the Netherlands, Foundation De Einder offers counselling to people who wish to be able to self-determine the timing and manner of their end of life.AimThis study explores the experiences with counselling that counselees receive from counsellors facilitated by Foundation De Einder.MethodsOpen coding and inductive analysis of in-depth interviews with 17 counselees.ResultsCounselling ranged from solely receiving information about lethal medication to combining this with psychological counselling about matters of life and death, and the effects for close ones. Counselees appreciated the (...) availability of the counsellor, their careful and open attitude, feeling respected and being reminded about their own responsibility. Some counselees felt dependent on the counsellor, or questioned their competency. Most counselees collected lethal medication. This gave them peace of mind and increased their quality of life, but also led to new concerns. Few were inclined to use their self-collected medication. Counselling contributed to thinking about if, when and how counselees would like to end their life.ConclusionHaving obtained means to end their lives can offer people feelings of reassurance, which can increase their quality of life, but can also give rise to new concerns. Next to providing information on lethal medication, counsellors can play an important role by having an open non-judgemental attitude, providing trustworthy information and being available. These positively valued aspects of counselling are also relevant for physicians taking care of patients who wish to self-determine the timing and manner of their end of life. (shrink)

The continued advance of global value chains as the mode of production for an increasing number of goods and services has impacted considerably on the economies and societies both of the developed world and the emerging economies. Although there have been many efforts at reform there is evidence of unresolved dilemmas of human rights, environmental issues and ethical dilemmas in the operation of the global value chain. This paper focuses on the role and performance of Apple Inc in the global (...) value chain in Asia. Apple is the most successful corporation on earth measured in financial terms and yet has failed to find a solution to recurrent employment and environmental problems occurring in plants manufacturing Apple components. This analysis informs the current theoretical debate on the development of the global value chain and the continuing institutional failure that leaves employees vulnerable and the environment neglected. (shrink)

One of the hardest questions to answer for a (Neo)platonist is to what extent and how the changing and unreliable world of sense perception can itself be an object of scientific knowledge. My dissertation is a study of the answer given to that question by the Neoplatonist Proclus (Athens, 411-485) in his Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus. I present a new explanation of Proclus’ concept of nature and show that philosophy of nature consists of several related subdisciplines matching the ontological stratification (...) of nature. Moreover, I demonstrate that for Proclus philosophy of nature is a science, albeit a hypothetical one, which takes geometry as its methodological paradigm. I also offer an explanation of Proclus’ view of what is later called the mathematization of physics, i.e. the role of the substance of mathematics, as opposed to its method, in explaining the natural world. Finally, I discuss Proclus’ views of the discourse of philosophy of nature and its iconic character. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that Søren Kierkegaard’s oeuvre can be seen as a theater of ideas. This argument is developed in three steps. First, I will briefly introduce a theoretical framework for addressing the theatrical dimension of Kierkegaard’s works. This framework is based on a distinction between“performative writing strategies” and “categories of performativity.” As a second step, I will focus on Repetition: A Venture in Experimenting Psychology, by Constantin Constantius, one of the best examples of Kierkegaard’s innovative way of (...) doing philosophy. This strange and elusive book introduces the difficult and counter-intuitive notion of repetition. Repetition is a category of performativity that aims to activate the subjectivity of the reader. This performative effect is achieved by confronting the reader with an “unresolved”existential problem that is not yet drawn into clarity but is staged in all its confusions and contradictions. Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Constantius relies here on a performative writing strategy that is animated by a dialectic of advance and withdrawal. In the last and third step, I will analyze Constantius’s own reflection on the performative dimension of his text. Constantius has left several clues behind, each of which suggests that he deliberately developed a performative writing strategy. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Millennium Jahrgang: 11 Heft: 1 Seiten: 69-100.